Physicist Carlo Rovelli has criticized what he describes as naive realism within analytic philosophy, according to a talk reported by IAI TV on Tuesday, September 15, 2026.
The remarks, covered by IAI TV, center on a long-running dispute over how philosophy should describe the relationship between human perception and an independent reality. Rovelli's target, per the outlet's framing, is the position that the world is roughly as it appears to observers and can be described without deeper qualification.
Rovelli is a theoretical physicist known for his work on quantum gravity, a field in which the nature of observation, measurement and reality is a central concern. His argument, as IAI TV presents it, draws on that background to push back on the assumption that everyday experience gives a straightforward picture of how things actually are.
Analytic philosophy is a tradition that emphasizes clarity, logic and careful argument, and it has produced extensive work on perception, knowledge and the mind. Naive realism, in this context, is the view that perception puts us in direct contact with objects as they exist independently of us. Rovelli's critique, according to IAI TV, treats that view as insufficiently attentive to what physics suggests about the observer's role.
The disagreement matters beyond academic circles because it shapes how researchers talk about evidence, measurement and the limits of description. IAI TV's report does not include the full text of the talk, so the specifics of Rovelli's argument remain to be examined in the original.
Watch for the full talk or a transcript to clarify which analytic philosophers Rovelli names and how he answers realist objections.